AMMAN, Jordan, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- A stray dog in northeastern Jordan saved a four-year-old girl from dying of stab wounds when it led a passerby to the wounded child, a Jordanian newspaper reported Sunday.
The English-language Jordan Times daily quoted police sources as saying the dog found the unidentified girl bleeding on the side of a road in Mafraq, 60 miles north of the capital, Amman.
The head of the Mafraq Police Department, Gen. Abdullah Kreishan, was quoted as saying that the dog found the little girl lying near a barbed-wire fence off a road and alerted the driver of a pick-up truck who was traveling along the street.
The paper said a Jordanian man had stabbed to death the girl's 35-year-old mother, in addition to stabbing the child, in a Mafraq ranch.
It quoted other police sources as saying the man, suspected to have been the mother's boyfriend, was identified by the little girl after she regained consciousness at the hospital. She also informed the authorities on the whereabouts of her mother's body, which had been dumped in a remote ranch.
Sources told United Press International that the mother and child were Iraqi, and that the father commuted between Jordan and his home country.
A police official quoted the truck driver as saying he was driving when the dog blocked his path and would not move until he came out to follow it, the paper said.
"The driver told the authorities he felt the dog wanted to tell him something and would not move until he got out of his vehicle to see what was the matter," the source said.
"The dog would not move until he saw the man put the girl inside his truck. Then the dog disappeared," he added.
Sources said the little girl, recovering in Mafraq's government hospital, would probably be returned to Iraq to live with her father and family.
She had walked 550 yards toward a main street when she regained consciousness after the attack, police sources said.
She was lying unconscious near the road when the dog found her.
The Jordan Times said the police arrested and charged a 28-year-old Jordanian man for murder and attempted murder, adding that the suspect had confessed his crime to the authorities.
Police sources said the suspect's motives were financial, after the woman, who has been living in Mafraq for six years, asked him for money that he owed her.
